Sever and Bind
by Arashi Leonhart
Summary: Saber considers her hatred of one particular person.


Sever and Bind

* * *

I hated that man like no other.

There is the kind of hatred one has for things that are repulsive. The one called Caster, such as he was, earned that kind of hatred from me. It is not a personal feeling; it is but a wrath for something completely alien and inhuman. It is the kind of base emotion one has as a mortal in the face of mortality, placed before something capable of acts that serve no rhyme or reason other than the sad finality of death and its ugliness. Although I called this Caster one who has fallen, it was one who had fallen from humanity rather than any higher purpose.

It was not that kind of hatred.

There is the hatred that can be felt toward that which is ethically different. Archer and Rider both represented that sense of hatred I felt. They are beings that understand on the higher level, somewhere above intuitive human feelings but not yet philosophical or entirely inexplicable; yet the conclusions they have come to, the perceptions that they have, the goals that they make are not at all in line with your beliefs. It is a hatred toward those that do not understand when they should, that do not believe when they could.

It was not that kind of hatred, either.

On the other side of that, I concede, there must be the hatred of my own incomprehension. It is a feeling close to sadness and frustration. There were times that I felt it with Irisviel, momentarily, fleetingly. The inability to understand her thoughts and feelings because my own knowledge and perception had nothing by which to compare. Her relationships and desire to connect, for no reason other than a whimsical fancy.

It was certainly not that kind of hatred.

It was the hatred of seeing enough of yourself there, only dirtied and blooded from too many battles, from a hell both inside and out. That man was like me, unfortunately, one that carried the burdens of war and death and destruction. It was a hatred of seeing your reflection in a broken mirror or the disturbed water, of both seeing oneself but not at the same time. He believed in nothing, I thought. The age he lived in had tainted him, or he had buckled under the strain of the troubles he took on, and yet his will carried him onward despite the soul beneath recognizing only death.

It was the hatred of oneself that Kiritsugu Emiya brought out.

He said that spirits such as I believed in the illusions of glory and honor. Like such things were nothing, are nothing. He said that we do not recognize the battlefield for the place of suffering and pain it is, even implied that it means nothing to us when compared to our words and ideals.

He said that justice and righteousness alone cannot save the world.

I hated him for that. I hated his lack, his emptiness, whatever it was within him that had gone out, whether days or weeks, months or years before. Unlike with Caster, the idea that he was one who had descended from the path was not the path of humanity. It was the path of the good and just. It was the path I believed myself upon, believed that he once stood upon as well before allowing himself to wallow and stray.

I hated it more than the others because I could understand it unlike the others.

After all, if I had such hatred in my own heart, did it not mean that I was just as guilty?

* * *

I still believed in such heroes that he had given up on. There is no other reason to participate in this battle for the Holy Grail if I did not. There were many that I saw with my own eyes that were like that. Many within my own halls that could have been that. I do not know how the world sees them now, but to my own eyes, so many were everything I could have ever asked for myself. Honorable, righteous, compassionate, even mighty.

They could have done it, could they have not? Taken the sword in my hands, taken the throne beneath my body, and taken the world that I knew and brought it true salvation. Someone pious like Galahad or humble like Bedivere, fair and just Kay or mighty Gawain.

Yet even that belief left open that strange weakness I could feel within me, the same vulnerability that left me enraged by Kiritsugu's words.

The honor of the people I fought for—honor that was only stained in its own blood when Camelot was rent apart from within. The ideals I held to my own chest and within my own hands—even as allies and enemies alike died around me, in pain and anguish.

The just and right actions that I took and believed in, even as they destroyed those I called my own.

If my decisions were just, why then did it mean the smiles I wished for disappeared from my sight?

* * *

I hated him, as I hated my own failing. I hated knowing that even if I wanted to say that we were walking two different paths, in my heart I knew that was not right at all. If it were, I would have been able to forfeit my desire to have my wish granted then and there—for I still believed as he did not.

But I could not. I was willing to allow that man a chance at his wish, despite the evils that he carried out, so that I may have my own.

I was willing to let those few be sacrificed one more so others still could have their chance.

"I order you to destroy the Grail," he had said.

After all of his choices, his actions, his words. He was going to save his world from the very destructiveness he embodied.

Our salvation. Our hopes.

"I order you, Saber, destroy the Grail."

Why?

Did he hate my kind so that he would curse us with his last breath? Had he truly fallen from righteousness such that he would forfeit his own redemption for the hatred in his own heart?

Irisviel said he was named for his source, for the origin of his soul. Was this truly his destiny, to cut apart my chance at saving those I loved and binding me with that truth forever?

Was I so weak that I could have made the same choice, in a different time, a different place?

* * *

When my eyes opened within that shed once more, I feared who it was that would meet me. The possibility that I would once more meet that broken reflection. Even if I did not have the answer to his choice, even if I had the chance to curse him for his actions, I feared being before him again, feared the vulnerabilities he made with me would be torn back open and new ones added to the bargain.

Severed and bound.

If the shed was not much changed, the house was. Painted. Maintained. Even if the interior was minimalist, it was not the basic shelter that had existed before. It was comfortable. Clean. There was warmth there, personality, even if that character was simplistic and austere.

He was not the child I would have expected if the truth were explained to me from without. Even as he was, certainly, there were things that I recognized as influenced from a broken man. Broken survival instincts. Broken ethics and codes to live by. Broken decisions that made no logical sense. However, he had one thing that was still surprising, still strangely nurtured within him.

Kiritsugu had said that the battlefield was hell, that there was no glory or honor, no righteousness. He said it was a place of despair and death.

I believed this one could be no further from that truth. Even if his choices were insensible and ethics warped, even if it meant throwing away his life—I saw no despair or acceptance of death there.

All that existed there was one who only pursued the other end. He only had hope and idealism, only wanted life to keep going onward. And certainly, there was something honorable in that pursuit, something righteous in that perception.

"Kiritsugu wished that I would look after him," I had said, and something had left my body with those words, like a breath I did not know I was holding.

Here was that very thing I had tried to expose in that man, my answer when he had denied everything I believed in. He had glared so fiercely at me when I said it that it could only have been true—that he had once believed in championing justice just as this one did with reckless abandon.

When I slept, I dreamed, and I saw. It was not what I could have expected, not what I claimed he was bound to end with.

A whimsical man that only made smiles, even tinged with sadness and regret as they were. He smiled at the one whose eyes I saw through, with each moment the boy decided to do something only little boys could consider heroic.

My illusions broke. This was not the man that had commanded me to betray what we so desired. This was not the monster that I wanted to blame for abandoning everything I knew he was capable of maintaining. He was, in fact, the opposite, a man who kept everything I suspected he had began with.

He was a man who had gotten the very wish that I so desired, to start from the beginning once more.

He severed himself from what I knew and shored up what I thought should have been where he truly existed.

* * *

He cut many things apart and rewound them that way, forever changed. For him, raised first by a magus and then by a gun for hire, it was perceived in the most damaging, resourceful, methodical way. It was his weapon, his tool, his influence in the world. He lived by it, exemplified it, and died by it.

He severed himself from his emotions and bound them up tightly to become a killing weapon.

He severed his enemies from their strength and bound them to weakness so they could die easily.

He severed his desires for peace and happiness with those he loved and bound them to a fate of tragedy.

I am not sure if he ever saw it any other way. It was both his strength and his curse, and in the end all it did was curse him to the grave. I wonder if he hated himself in the exact same way I did, trapped up in his own existence.

* * *

I wonder what he would think of that now.

He cut me with his very presence, helped open a wound that was like no other. It was bound that way, exposed for the world to see—as it never truly left my mind.

But if one cuts a string and then ties it back together, depending on how it is tied, it is possible for the whole to be stronger than before.

It is possible the thread of my fate was severed and rebound. Fate itself did not change—in my heart, it feels as if I was always meant to come here.

But now it is thicker than before, the connection between the halves.

"Saber, destroy the Grail."

On the other side, I now look back and see what was before, and finally understand.

Even if this Grail could not do what I wanted, it was still an acceptance. To throw away the wish that I had. To throw away the chance at the smiles that I once knew and had lost, that should not have been lost and should have flourished even after I was gone.

And to throw away this small happiness that I had found here, with the one that had somehow became my strength where I was weakest of all.

All because you saved this one, cutting yourself from your desires to follow what you believed in—and binding him to me.

I stare at your son, the one that sees me as I am, and sees the same side of me that I must acknowledge as similar to you:

Perhaps I can allow myself to give up on that hatred.

* * *

End

* * *

Lets see, uh, the only thing I can think of to say is that Saber calls both Caster and Kiritsugu "Gedou" at different times, which means something like "heretic" or "fallen." If you want a clear cultural way to perceive it, it's the same word they use in _Samurai Sentai Shinkenger_ for the villains, Gedoushuu; Juuzou and Daiyuu are good examples of the kind of beings that have fallen from the path of humanity.


End file.
